


On a Night Like This II

by stardust_made



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Romance, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:14:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/pseuds/stardust_made
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt "Sherlock sings *just* for John." In bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On a Night Like This II

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up of [On a Night Like This](http://archiveofourown.org/works/303072), but can be read as a stand-alone. Beta by the fantastic [](http://disastrolabe.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://disastrolabe.livejournal.com/)**disastrolabe**. Written for bulleteyes. Happy New Year, everyone!:)

“The last time I was in bed with someone and there were candles on the nightstand must have been...oh, when I was in my first year in college. God,” John whispered the last after a beat.

Sherlock’s breath touched John’s face like the softest cotton. “Just blow them out if they bother you.”

John frowned. “Why would they bother me?”

“I thought you meant it was—That you were supposed to do that only when you were young. The candles while being in bed with someone.” Sherlock sounded uncertain, like he still did, when they circled around his fledging understanding of ordinary human experience. John’s fingers brushed Sherlock’s abdomen under the covers.

“I only meant it was ages ago. I suppose it’s not surprising,” he said, then was struck by how that might make him look. “Not that I haven’t had my share of, erm… _liaisons_ ,” he added.

Sherlock lifted his eyebrows and his lips twitched. John focused on the mole on Sherlock’s neck, while he continued to mutter himself out of the hole he’d dug. “I was just talking about, you know. I mean, that kind of romance—It’s a girl’s thing, I guess.”

There was a pause. John thought that being so British was not always a source of pride.

“It’s like that bloke says in _Fawlty Towers_ ,” he finished, suddenly amused. “Great British Lovers—one of the world’s shortest books.” He chuckled to himself.

Sherlock didn’t smile; his face was mellow, though, and he had listened intently to John’s ramblings. John wondered if Sherlock understood the joke, then berated himself for thinking Sherlock so naïve…then berated himself more for _still_ being unsure how far Sherlock’s ignorance stretched—and he didn’t refer to _Fawlty Towers_. It wasn’t entirely John’s fault. The man, for all their closeness in every sense of the word, continued to be like a closed book. Okay, maybe not closed, but a book with pages that were very thin and stuck together. Only a very delicate touch could turn them and John had tried, but it was a big book!

He felt Sherlock’s eyes on him and sighed inwardly—he, on the other hand, was wide open for Sherlock to skim his contents freely. Oh, let him watch. John felt his self-reproach dissipate. Knowing everything about Sherlock was like knowing everything about the universe. Besides, Sherlock’s ignorance was often connected with his total lack of interest in a subject and until not too long ago it had been safe to assume love and sex weren’t…well, his area. But then Sherlock had started making exceptions. He had learnt some things—or at least had stopped deleting them—while he’d also gone out of his way to observe other things. John realized he was the reason for these exceptions, but it would be a lie if he said he could see a pattern in Sherlock’s knowledge. Still, he was grateful anyway. It had saved him some embarrassing conversations, and it was…it made him feel pretty good.

There was enough distance between them as they were lying on their sides, facing each other, for John to spot Sherlock’s eyelids beginning to droop again. They were both sleepy, but were keeping themselves and each other awake. They’d conversed like this, sparsely and randomly, for nearly an hour. John was so weightless and happy that he could have gladly died right now. He was sure part of it was post-coital bliss, but he had been a bit fuzzy around the edges all night, ever since Sherlock had danced them across the sitting room earlier. Maybe it was also the complete lack of artificial light and noise in the flat, or the candles—

Without agreeing on it, they had just taken all four candles from the sitting room and placed them around the bedroom. It was suitably darker in the absence of a fireplace and both John and Sherlock had responded to the ambience by wordlessly turning to each other and beginning to kiss. The world had narrowed down to their mouths. At one point John had felt himself being undressed and had shaken with the sudden awareness that there was actually _more_ to happen, beyond the kissing. That once again they were going to tumble into bed and do anything they wished to each other, all night if they wished so—

Sherlock’s hand startled John out of his reverie. It moved to his groin and softly cradled his penis and testicles. John shivered, more from the familiarity of the gesture than from any arousal; he was spent, in the most finite, self-congratulatory manner. He’d bloody kiss himself if he could. As it was, he was content to press his lips to Sherlock’s chin.

Sherlock’s touch down there assumed the mystery it always possessed: the contact was part of John on a molecular level and yet assuredly, unmistakably another man’s— _Sherlock’s_. John had been amazed by it from the very first time. The fact that Sherlock seemed to derive some comfort from just holding John like that was not mysterious in and of itself—at least not to John. He’d studied Psychiatry. He knew people had their oddities, but more than that, he had never really been bothered about people’s oddities. The mystique was in how the gesture made John feel.

He could never describe it, not properly, and that was fine. He only knew it was the kind of intimacy he wanted to keep experiencing; something fundamental to his very will to live and to his understanding of what being human was all about. The feeling was almost as good as when the same part of his anatomy was being handled in other ways by other parts of Sherlock’s anatomy.

Like Sherlock’s mouth. John loved being in Sherlock’s mouth a little too much. He sometimes stopped Sherlock as Sherlock was pleasuring him, and he let himself stay _in_ , immobile, for countless moments. The feeling of his penis growing sweetly heavy, with such enormous speed, of his same organic merging with the palate and the moisture of Sherlock’s mouth…It was as if gravity quadrupled and compressed John’s chest with hammering pleasure.

Sherlock had figured it out very quickly, of course. One of the major perks of being with a genius of his kind: In bed, nothing ever had to be pointed out or explained or hoped to be noticed. On the occasions of John’s self-indulgence Sherlock would also get perfectly still, keeping as much of John in his mouth as possible. Cheeks slightly hollowed, lips slightly stretched, eyes always looking up and locking on John’s. Only once had Sherlock done something other than simply wait for John to decide when to move. That time, though he hadn’t let go of John’s eyes, he’d let his jaw slack and his mouth fall open, at the same time tilting his head back so that John could see himself plainly, lodged there in the semi-darkness, his length disappearing deeper into Sherlock’s throat to the point where it could no longer be seen but only felt.

John had groaned and then plunged into Sherlock’s mouth so hard that he’d scared himself. Afterwards. At the time all boundaries had erased themselves like chalk on a playground and control had—

Later, he’d asked Sherlock never to do that again. Sherlock had looked at him, wide-eyed and unblinking, then after an eternity had said, “Okay”. And had not done it again.

Now Sherlock’s hand was equally still. His fingers—the fingers of an experimental chemist—barely trembled once in a long while, causing pleasant shivers to run down John’s spine at the roll of his balls. They’d fallen asleep like that a couple of times.

“Human anatomy is fascinating,” Sherlock spoke under his nose. “You’re so flaccid; you’re just tiny.”

A completely irrational sting pierced John. Tiny. Well, in this kind of relationship a lack of extravagant size was really more beneficial if anything, and John _was_ flaccid, but still—

He lifted his eyes to Sherlock and saw that the right corner of his lips had quirked. John sluggishly dragged his hand out and swatted Sherlock’s arm—not the one holding his private parts. “Very funny,” he said, beginning to grin, too. “Go ahead, ruin the mood.”

“You’re feeling very romantic tonight, aren’t you?” Sherlock murmured.

John felt bashful, but fought to hide it well. “So what?”

“Nothing. I don’t mind. It means you become an even better lover. I don’t think I’ve ever been licked so thoroughly—or quite like that before. You were very considerate and giving.”

John’s bashfulness increased perceptibly, together with the reappearance of self-congratulation. It made for an unpleasant beetroot colour, he was sure.

“It’s still, I don’t know—odd, to hear you talk about that,” he said, in part to change the subject, in part because it was true.

Sherlock pulled his head back to have a better look at John, causing another surge of pleasant shivers—the motion had made Sherlock’s hand move.

“I’m not trying to embarrass you,” Sherlock said, a slight line between his eyebrows. “That’s my way of being romantic. I’m telling you my honest observations.”

“By speaking like someone from a women’s magazine?” John replied, and immediately flinched. Idiot. Focus on the trying part, not on how it was coming across. But Sherlock seemed unperturbed.

“How would you like me to do it?” he asked.

John pulled back as well. “Are you asking me to tell you how to be romantic?”

“Why not? I like it when you are—although I have to say I’m glad it’s not all the time—and I assume you’d like it, too.”

John considered. “All right. Well, actually this is pretty romantic. Just, you know. Being here, together.”

It was true. He didn’t want anything more than what Sherlock was giving him right now, but he was afraid that saying it out loud would tip the romance into sap, ruining the very moment by articulating it. So he kept quiet.

Sherlock didn’t. Of course, he didn’t.

“I want to do something for you, John, of that sort. Treat it like education. Or like an investment in your future well being. Or treat it like a—”

“Fine, fine.” John smiled and ran the nail of his index finger over the right panel of Sherlock’s chest. If it was lighter in the room he could have seen the thin trail that disappeared before the eye was certain it had caught it.

“That song earlier on,” he said, “the one you were humming when we danced.”

“Hmm?”

“Do you know the lyrics?”

“Surprisingly, I do,” Sherlock said. “Music isn’t quite like facts; I’m hardly ever able to delete it. Most of the time that’s good. But sometimes, like with that song you kept playing on your laptop—” Sherlock grimaced, then looked at John abruptly. “Why did you ask?”

“Because I’d like you to sing it for me.”

Sherlock regarded him for a few seconds, then cleared his throat unconsciously. He dragged himself upward, letting go of John. John felt the loss as if he was in the middle of the Afghan desert and his tent and everything in it had just been spirited away. Sherlock turned into a sitting position, sheets dropping low down on his chest until they reached his stomach and he settled them there under his entwined fingers. John felt a flutter of curiosity; Sherlock was definitely preparing himself to sing. John lifted a bit, too, propping his head on his hand and looking up at Sherlock expectantly. Sherlock cleared his throat again and his face became solemn. He then began: _Round and round the garden, like a Teddy Bear/One step, two step—_

“Sherlock!” John said, grinning, and gave his stomach a light pinch. Sherlock recoiled and chuckled, too, glancing down at John. “Sorry,” he said.

“No, no.” John shook his head, still smiling. “That’s actually, yeah. Quite romantic. Laughing in bed.”

Sherlock looked pleased, before frowning. “You got upset when I laughed the other night about how you thought your blog had been nominated for that award, when in fact someone had—”

“That was laughing at me,” John interrupted, a touch cross.

“Oh.” Sherlock blinked quickly. He thought for a moment, then looked at John, raising curious eyebrows as if he was expecting an informative lecture. John shook his head.

“Can you sing properly, please?” he said.

Sherlock pursed his lips, but nodded. He settled himself again, shuffling, took some time. His face blanked out…but not his eyes. John couldn’t quite see them, but he knew what they were not: empty of emotion. Sherlock took a breath and started singing quietly.

And suddenly his eyes became one with the melody and the words, with his bare chest rising and falling, his beautiful lips curling. Sherlock had a deep, good voice that carried the tune well and managed to send a different burst of pleasant shivers down John’s spine without any physical contact. Initially there was no experimentation with the melody, but that quickly changed. John could hear Sherlock tweak and play as he went along, making the song his own. The low points were particularly enjoyable because they were in Sherlock’s natural range—he could rumble John into a _pre_ -orgasmic haze on most nights.

But it was the lyrics that kept John’s heart in his stomach.

 _I was a stranger in the city,_  
Out of town were the people I knew  
I had that feeling of self-pity  
What to do, what to do, what to do  
The outlook was decidedly blue

_But as I walked through the foggy streets alone  
It turned out to be the luckiest day I've known_

_A foggy day, in London town_  
Had me low, had me down  
I viewed the morning, with much alarm  
British Museum, had lost its charm

 _How long I wondered,_  
Could this thing last  
But the age of miracles, hadn't past  
For suddenly, I saw you there  
And through foggy London town,  
The sun was shining everywhere

 _For suddenly, I saw you there_  
And through foggy London town,  
The sun was shining everywhere

“You can say something,” Sherlock said, when thirty seconds had passed and John remained silent.

John knew he could. He knew he should. He just wasn’t very good at saying some things, and this was just…

“This was just…” he said.

Sherlock looked at him, expectation and some undefined vulnerability running over his features.

“I’ve been told I have a good singing voice,” he said. “Not great, though,” he added, musingly. “Didn’t get me the part in that show, but it didn’t matter anyway. I was auditioning so I could check the layout of the stage and meet the choreographer. It wasn’t him, but the girl _had_ been killed there: The only way for that glitter to have appeared on the seams of her coat was if she’d been dragged through the right end of the backstage. The murderer had used one of the wigs to give herself an alibi. Very clever.” Sherlock looked sideways at John. “Remind me to tell you about it one day.”

John nodded, then said truthfully, “That was lovely.” Sherlock’s abrupt reversion to being himself seemed to have freed both John’s heart and his tongue. “It was—You have a lovely voice. And the song…Erm. Very nice. Thank you.”

Sherlock untwined his fingers and shuffled to turn onto his left side, facing John again. He was likely seeing the tip of John’s head, though, because he slid down further, until they were back to looking into each other’s eyes.

“I think I know why I wasn’t able to delete that particular song,” he said after a pause.

John knew the answer, but every once in a while he did want to hear it, dammit.

“Why?”

Sherlock tilted his chin to the right and studied John, eyes filling with more warmth than John thought he could bear.

“Okay. I’ll say it. That was me back then. And then I met you.”

John’s smile must have been very melancholic—he could see it reflected in the puzzlement of Sherlock’s eyes. He found Sherlock’s fingers under the covers and entwined them with his own.

“Not just you,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> My favourite version of the song (Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong) can be heard [over here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRUKrRARn7M).


End file.
